Page 62 of One-Star Romance

So she said nothing. Did nothing. And the days flew by, each one bringing her closer and closer to the end of his time at the university. The last day of classes arrived. Students still had their exams and their papers to turn in, but Michael was heading back to the gallery, which needed his attention.

He packed up his papers and books, then turned to her. She tried to hand him the Nia North drawing, but he shook his head. “You keep it. She belongs with you.”

“That’s too generous,” Zuri said. “And I haven’t given you anything.”

“You gave me a place to stay for three months,” he said, “and a wonderful semester.”

She swallowed hard. “Well.”

“Well,” he said, and held out his hand to shake hers. “Goodbye.”

They didn’t let go when the handshake was done. Outside, students trudged along the campus, lost in thought, or shrieked with laughter with their friends.

“Nobody ever ended up fixing those pipes,” Zuri said, and finally withdrew her hand, waving it dismissively through the air as if she could brush her own feelings away. “Academia, it’s always slow.”

“I bribed him,” he said.

“What? Who?”

“A repairman came two weeks into my time here. I gave him four hundred dollars to tell the department that he wouldn’t be able to fix them until next semester.”

“Why did you do that?”

He gave her a sad smile, no touch of his usual impish grin. “You know why.”

A breath escaped her.

“I’ve never felt…” he began, his voice choked, then cut himself off. “I’m sorry. You’re engaged. This is inappropriate. Please forget—”

She kissed him then. In the split second before their lips met, Zuri wished for the kiss to be disappointing, a pale imitation of whatever she’d built up in her head. Then she’d go home to Rob and confess it to him. He’d be able to forgive her a single kiss, even if it might take some counseling. It would be the one thing she’d needed to get out of her system, her one moment of dubious morality, of impulsivity in a life that had been so rigidly disciplined.

But the kiss was not disappointing. It knocked them both sideways. That border between Zuri and her emotions, through which she could occasionally make a small hole? This kiss ripped the border down entirely. On the other side of the wall lay a rippling sea of possibility. Who she could be, what she could feel, if only she was brave or foolish enough to take the plunge.

•••

That night, she went home to Rob, who was typing diligently in their wedding spreadsheet, entering the allergies and food restrictions of the guests who had responded in the affirmative so far. He’d been so good about the planning, taking exactly half of it, offering to do more. He’d gotten a little obsessive, actually, spending far more time price-comparing DJs than anyone else might have done, reading every single online review of their venue before they booked it. It all seemed to take up more space in his brain than his academic work did, a pattern he’d need to break if he was hoping to make tenure.

“Do you think Celia is gluten-free, as in she’ll be sick for days if she eats a crumb,” he asked by way of a greeting, “or as in ‘gluten-free is trendy’?”

How could she be the kind of woman who called off a wedding? Especially when the groom-to-be had done nothing wrong? Her family would be ashamed, her friends would whisper, worried that she must be losing her mind. It was so entirely out of character. And yet, knowing what she knew, feeling what she felt, how could she not?

“Robert,” she said, and he whipped his head up at the tone of her voice, penitent.

“I didn’t mean to make fun of Celia. I just want to tell the caterers exactly how careful to be.”

“That’s not it. Can we talk?”

He looked handsome and vulnerable in the black-frame glasses he wore when he was working, a wrinkle of concern in his forehead, his hair mussed from his habit of running a hand through it while concentrating. He had become her best friend, and if she said the words hammering in her throat, she would lose him forever.

“I kissed someone else,” she said.

He sat up straight, blinking a few times. “What?”

“I’m so sorry.”

His shock was written all over his face, that she could be capable of such a thing. Rob saw her as she’d always presented herself. Everything she told him and herself about who she was, about what she wanted, he took it at face value. Perhaps because they were so outwardly similar, they never pushed each other to dig for their own sharp corners, the mess inside, the parts that made them interesting.

“One kiss?” he asked, and she nodded. “When? And who was— No, I don’t want to know. We can go talk to someone about why it happened, what I should be doing differently.” She’d thought he’d react this way. It was how she might have reacted too, the same way as when an obstacle came up at work. “We can fix this.”

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